COURAGE - AN ARMOR, OUR ARMOR

"Every man has an obscure respect for courage in others, especially if it is moral courage, the rarest and most difficult sort of bravery... It makes the very brute understand that this man is more than a man."
(Passage from Life of Christ)

Courage... what a beautiful word that is! And who says it's only for the select few who eat challenges for breakfast. Courage -- you see it on the streets, you sense it in your friends and strangers alike. Because we all have our stories to tell. Our personal histories which stand as testimonies to a life splattered with all that you can imagine would happen-will happen. That's life.

Imagine a movie of your friends' lives and you sit there glued to what is happening or being said or done. You see the failed dreams -- the fierce struggles -- the unfairness and meanness of some hearts -- the frustrations that bring one down to his knees -- the silent tears, hopes and dreams -- the anger welling up from utter desperation -- the ebb-and-flow of faith -- the masks put on because he's been told that he can't let the world see his misery. You're seeing his life.... but you're seeing yours too. Because life knows no rank but treats everyone the same with trials, turbulence, struggles, and fierce challenges. Everyone. There is no trouble-free life... or trouble-free person.

Courage in whatever form, huge or small, is what takes us down the journey each time. It's what turns our eyes to the skies looking for that rainbow or searching the far horizon for traces of one's dream. Or looking for the sun behind or beyond the gray clouds of misery. It's looking into a stranger's eyes trying to see a friend. It's that hope attached to a resume for a job and future so-desired for self or family. It's that once flickering faith in the heart now reborn on seeing doctors, nurses, medicines working to help heal the disease shaking his body. It's the soldier at the forefront fighting a war that isn't even his. It's a old wrinkled farmer working bent and weary under the fierce noonday sun. It's a middle-aged woman washing other people's clothes for a measly sum to feed her fatherless children. And more... so much more.

Courage is what you see everyday. It's the face that makes life real. It's what we have plenty of. It's what life is made of.

Stand tall with your armor of courage. It's God's gift.